I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of dispensing adhesive-backed labels to a plurality of articles as they pass by a dispenser and, in particular, the present invention relates to an automatic label dispensing apparatus.
II. Description of the Prior Art
In heavy-duty industrial systems, product identification and control marking are important elements in the process of manufacturing and are required for quality control to identify the source of manufacture of a particular article and/or to identify articles for their subsequent distribution. Numerous methods have been employed in the past to mark articles, such as color-coded ink sprays and manually applied stickers. The introduction of adhesive-backed labels and hand-held, manually operated applicators has greatly facilitated the marking of articles in that the applicators provide a simple means for applying an adhesive-backed label to an article and in which the identifying indicia to be placed upon the label can be simply changed. Such hand-held label applicators are well known and used extensively in the retail industry for marking the price of articles to be sold. Their use, however, in the heavy-duty industrial system is limited because of the necessity for marking many items at a relatively high rate of speed. Their use is further inhibited by the fact that much of the manufacturing processes are automated and persons who would use such a manually operated applicator are occupied with the manufacturing process and are apt not to use the equipment properly or, worse, fail to apply the label to the article whose identification and/or control is important to the manufacturing process. In order to alleviate this problem, Applicant has designed an automatic label dispensing apparatus which utilizes the conventional hand-held label applicator in such a manner as to facilitate the high-speed use of the same in the manufacturing process.